ten percent rule

In theory, when food energy is transferred from one trophic level to another in a food chain (from grass to bunny, bunny to hawk, etc.), only about ten percent of the energy is passed on.

So where does it all go? The remaining energy goes into maintaining the organism's internal body temperature, defending against predators, and generally running around being silly. Because so much energy is lost from level to level, from an efficiency point of view it is much better for the state of the world to get our energy straight from plants (or other autotrophs) which produce their own food from solar energy.

Also a law in Texas regarding the automatic admission in state higher educationinstitutions (&sect 51.803 of the Education Code. Automatic Admission: All Institutions). It works like this: if you graduate in the top 10% of your high school class, you can get automatic admission to any state university in Texas. This law is stupid, because it fills the universities with people who ordinarily would not have gotten in. The people who would have, but did not graduate in the top 10% have to duke it out for spots. It would be far wiser for them to be offered admission into one institution instead of all.

You can read the full text at:
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/ed/ed005100.html#ed154.51.803